Leading by Nature – An Immersive Embodiment of Next-Stage Regenerative Leadership for Navigating Uncertainty & Future-fitness
It’s a fascinating yet challenging time to be a leader. We are in the midst of an old system dying and a new one being born, all amid unceasing transformation – change upon change upon change is the new-norm.
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage future-fit leader – one that can work with and thrive amid complexity, and journey toward becoming regenerative for self and system.
On Thursday 19th September 2024, I will host a special nature-based leadership immersion providing an embodied experience of what it means to become a Regenerative Leader.
The Immersion – Logistics:
9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4.15pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ .
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.15am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £400 – To register for your place either Direct Message me on LinkedIn or contact me via my website https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, your place is confirmed, and you will be sent preparatory material and guidance. Other emails will also be sent near the immersion with further information.
What can you hope to gain from the experience: You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire day. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- An embodied experience of regenerative leadership
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Consciousness-raising practices and modalities
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of Leading by Nature book (or any other of Giles’s books)
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
- A certificate from The Future Fit Leadership Academy for your attendance
- A special 40% discount code for regenerative leadership coaching with Giles Hutchins
Some quotes from previous open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘The nature immersion workshop with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘What an inspiring day in the woods Giles, a great balance of talking, contemplation, meditation, being in nature – Thank you so very much!’ –Participant, CEO of non-profit organization
“In these challenging times, Giles offers those of us in the ‘business as usual’ world both hope and the opportunity for deep connection with nature, spirit and ourselves. I highly recommend joining Giles for one of his immersion journeys of reconnection for a beautiful perspective on how we might do business differently and better.” – Will Adeney, Management Consultant & Nature Connection Mentor
‘Your immersion into nature opened our minds, opened our souls, to deeply connect with our place and purpose in life. With love and deep appreciation for your inspiration.’ – Sue Cheshire, Founder of the Global Leaders Academy
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO of Pulse Brands
‘Having read Giles’ last book – Regenerative Leadership, I had high expectations. They were surpassed, magnificently. Giles took us on a journey that saw complete strangers enter into a state of connection, high trust and intimacy – in a matter of hours. We emerged nourished, energised, connected, centred and better equipped to deal with the challenges of life in the early ‘20s. For those seeking answers around their personal and professional development – I can’t recommend Giles and his work highly enough. – Richard Tyre, CEO of Good People
‘Giles’s blends business expertise, deep connection with nature and our living environment and experience in transformation, helping us think differently and progressively about work and organisational intent. He is magical in his ability to generate ‘safe spaces’ for conversations that matter’ – Caroline Gosling, Director, Rubica
‘Powerful and provocative – the most useful leadership course I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, Wilco
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres in total, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://gileshutchins.com/springwood/
About Giles Hutchins: Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, certified in Adult Developmental Harthill LDF, and other modalities.
For more on coaching with Giles or to register for the one-day immersion, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for conscious leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
“A truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature. Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds. This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy
The 19th September is a one-off one-day open programme for 2024, and places are limited. See here to register your interest: https://gileshutchins.com/contact/
The Synchronistic Nature of Nature – Time to Connect
It’s likely that we’ve been educated to see nature as innately competitive, as separate species struggle for survival in a dog-eat-dog world amid a clockwork universe devoid of meaning. Even our nature programs on TV sensationalize the competitive nature of life. Combat, struggle, and strife, it seems, entice our attention and make for gripping viewing. From this mechanistic perspective, the only point to life is self-preservation through maximization, where one only survives in this world by outcompeting others. The irony is that this narrowed focus on self-preservation and competition is undermining our evolution, and therefore our self-preservation.
“The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.” Gregory Bateson
A hyper-competitive view of life has been applied to everything from the genes in our bodies to the soil beneath our feet, from organizations to the wider business environment, from socioeconomics to civilization itself. Yes, competition and survival are important aspects of life, yet the nature in our own bodies, in life around us, and throughout our organizations, neighbourhoods, and cities is far richer, more complex, and inter-relational than what the narrowed Mechanistic Materialism view provides.
What really happens in nature is that the chromosome, gene, nucleus, cell, organ, organism, and ecosystem all evolve in relation with each other through a rich interplay of collaboration and competition. In fact, science now recognizes that collaboration is the overriding evolutionary force—not competition. Interdependency, reciprocity, and relationality are what make life happen, all the way down to the quark strings within atoms and the molecules that make up our living cells, through to the teams within the organization inter-relating within a wider business ecosystem of diverse stakeholders including society and the more-than-human world. Everything and everyone learn and evolve through continuous sensing-responding of energetic exchanges with everything and everyone else. Participation rather than competition better characterizes life on Earth.
Evolution is not a linear chain reaction fueled by separate beings in competition. It’s a complex combination of tensions and reciprocal interactions, interpenetrations and inner-outer dynamics that create a nonlinear network within which evolution plays out through emergent sequences that seamlessly connect all life. This nonlinearity of interactions can seem like chaos. However, it is self-organizing and constitutes a higher form of order. No disorder or randomness here, only meaning to be found all the way down. Everything is full of energy and consciousness, and there is no distinction between the physical and metaphysical.
Rather than the mind-matter spirit-science split that has shaped the Western worldview for the last 400 years of Mechanistic Materialism, recent quantum physics, complexity science and facilitation ecology findings reveal the interconnected nature of life, from social systems to the soil in our fields. Mind and matter are two sides of the same coin.
Within the energetic patterns and forms of all living beings resides soul-essence and spirit. Mind is never divorced from matter, and energy follows thought, emotion, intention and awareness. Instead of outer forms and function dominating our perspective on what to value, measure and implement, we also need to become conscious of the animating sentience inherent throughout life and the power of intention and attention we bring to our participations within life.
This understanding, whilst relatively new to Western science, is of course not at all new. Throughout Eastern philosophy we find emphasis on interconnectedness and right-thought, for instance in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Tantra, Vedanta and animist aboriginal traditions found the world over.
And it’s not new to the Western mind either. For instance, Heraclitus of Ephesus some 2,500 years ago taught how everything is engaged in an intentional process of becoming; microcosm in relation to macrocosm. The founding fathers of Western philosophy and science, Plato and Aristotle, also knew that the psyche of the individual interacts with events outside itself, and that wellbeing and wisdom are found through the soul’s harmonic attunement within inner-outer nature. And more recently the psychologist C G Jung explored the importance of nonlocal acausal synchronicities rooted in the rhizome of the all-pervasive Field/Pleroma (or Tao). Synchronicities are a coherence of inner-outer nature, which our own conscious minds can aid, if we so choose.
We can perhaps all recall coincidental ‘chance’ encounters, déjà vu’s or short-lived peak-experiences that open our being to an invisible depth whereupon we glimpse an appreciation of totality and mystery. Such moments are meaning-making, whereupon we feel connected rather than isolated, and part of a dynamic participation in the very fabric of evolution itself.
Evolution, after all, is developmental. A co-creative inner-outer dynamic of emergent learning where soul-essence becomes more whole through adaptivity and learning. We sense ourselves as co-creators within life, rather than isolated billiard balls bouncing around purposelessly like ‘units of selfish ascendency’ in a world devoid of meaning driven only by blind-chance and hyper-competitiveness, as Neo-Darwinism would have us believe.
Interestingly, amid synchronistic moments our physiology shifts at the same time as our psychology shifts. The psyche opens along with the bodymind cohering as we experience these moments of interconnectedness. Left and right brain hemispheres’ cohere, head-heart-gut entrain, senses liven, hormones change, even brain synapses and plasticity enhance. We are more alive, more at-one, more human, coherent and whole. I call this ‘activating our super-nature’ where intuitive, emotional, somatic and rational ways of knowing work together as-one, rather than the disconnected rational-analytic ego-mind seeking dominance while creating separateness and dis-ease.
Through the power of our conscious intention and attention, and through various practices, we can enable this activation of our super-nature and so regenerate our humanity from the inside out.
‘The one who looks outside dreams. The one who looks inside awakens.’ C G Jung
We can encourage these meaning-making moments of synchronicity into our lives in ways that not only guide and inform our future-fit leadership amid volatile times aiding our capacity to embrace complexity and also allow us to be more in touch with our soul-purpose and its dynamic process of becoming within the emergent-evolutionary nature of life, therefore aiding our innate regenerative potential as leaders and human-beings. As psychiatrist Jean Shinoda Bolen notes,
‘Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological and spiritual growth and may reveal to us through intuitive knowledge, that our lives have meaning.’
When I experience synchronistic moments, I feel wisdom and grace flow in, and I sense that wisdom is not sourced inside the analytic-head but flows through inner-outer nature: Nature’s Wisdom. It’s like a tear in the fabric of the illusion of separation occurs and Nature’s Wisdom pours in, beyond the surface, an oceanic numinous depth becomes available – an awesome and humbling glimpse of what lies behind the humdrum of everyday utility yet pervading our presence amid every moment. We become more human, and conscious of our co-creative potential within the evolution of life on Earth. We begin to awaken to what it really means to be human, beyond mere survivalism and competition, as caretakers and participants within the sacredness of life, Nature and cosmos.
‘The greatest breakthroughs of the 21st century, won’t occur because of technology. They will occur because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.’ John Nisbett
The 400-year-old mindset of Mechanistic Materialism that dominates the modern Western mind – busily being exported to all corners of the world – conditions us to see the surface of things, and to ignore inner-nature. In doing so, we miss the meaningfulness of patterns, principles and purposefulness pervading the nature of our lives. We become uprooted from the rhizome of regeneration and so degeneration forms in our minds and also in our business ventures.
Central to any regenerative revolution is the essential need to realign inner and outer nature, left and right brain hemisphere, heads and hearts, mind and matter, masculine and feminine, yin and yang.
‘When masculine and feminine combine, all things achieve harmony.’ Lao Tzu
Any leadership development course, book, module or method that overlooks (or is ignorant of) the importance of inner-coherence for outer-harmony is a mere manifestation of Mechanistic Materialism, and will do precious little to guide our leaders through the next decade of seismic sea-change and immense volatility. Hence why, in my regenerative leadership coaching approaches and practices, leaders are aided to not merely cope with complexity but truly thrive amid rising complexity, volatility and uncertainty in becoming future-fit, while also activating their super-nature and becoming more human, more purposeful, more whole.
See here a short article written by one of the CEO’s of an award-winning B Corp who I am honoured to coach in Leading by Nature while Navigating through Transformative Times.
And as another CEO I coach, Jayne Mayled, notes:
‘Having been ‘leadership development-ed’ up to my eyeballs in my corporate years, Giles Hutchins brings a unique mix of skills and techniques to coaching for these transformative times.’
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here
You can also sign up to his newsletter here
This is a guest blog by award-winning CEO & Co-Founder, Derek Moore sharing insights on his regenerative leadership coaching journey with Giles Hutchins.
I was first made aware of Giles’ work by a chance encounter with a fellow sustainability advocate on LinkedIn. She recommended his recent book ‘Leading by Nature’ which piqued my interest. I ordered it from Amazon and got stuck in. I had a powerful realization while reading it of its inherent truth and importance and thoroughly recommend it. I would never normally try to reach out to a ‘famous’ author, but somehow I felt compelled to tell him how much I appreciated his work and explore if we might work together. I didn’t expect a response, so I was pleased when he replied a short while later agreeing to connect over Zoom.
I have been growing my business (Coffee & TV, a creative studio) and myself, for many years now. I came across the concept of regenerative agriculture on a retreat in Costa Rica and had become convinced of the benefits and wisdom of working with nature rather than struggling against it. When Giles helped me to realise that the same can be true in business; that companies, and indeed leaders, can flourish by following some of the basic principles of nature, something shifted inside me.
We started Coffee & TV back in 2012 as a small act of rebellion against the toxic, burn-out culture prevalent in the VFX industry at the time. Failing fast, being kind to yourself and to others, and taking sufficient breaks to rest, reset, and go again were intuitively very aligned to nature’s processes, even though we didn’t know it at the time.
I started working with Giles on a monthly 1-2-1 coaching basis in early 2023, in his beautiful woodland at Springwood Farm. He helped me to get clarity on the way nature really works. It is a system beautifully evolved for long term success, resilience and progressive change. 2023 was a tough year for our industry and also for us, so learning to accept the way things really are and working with what is, rather than what the ego desire’s, was very helpful.
What I didn’t know when I started working with Giles was what a year of massive transformation 2023 would be for my company and for me personally.
Coffee & TV had a clear intention to be ‘regenerative’, in that we planned to become an Employee Owned Trust, passing control to the next generation of talent. So we weren’t looking to sell or exit. However, in the summer we were approached by a leading global agency network who were aligned to our values and ethics. We went through an intense period of due diligence and in November sold a majority stake to them.
At almost the same time, I ended my 26-year marriage, which had been floundering for some time.
It was unbelievably helpful to have access to Giles’s wisdom, energy, compassion, insight and intuition as I navigated these huge shifts in my personal and professional life.
Unlike other coaches I have worked with, Giles doesn’t only ask questions. Sometimes he intuitively knows what you or your business needs and he doesn’t shy away from vocalising that. His combination of intuitive insight, practical leadership expertise (he’s been a business leader himself for many years), deep empathic listening and practical application of advanced adult developmental psychology I found particularly unique as a coach. There are also times when you just need to go deep inside yourself to get clarity. Giles holds space wonderfully for this. An overnighter by yourself, under your favourite tree in his ancient woods, is a great way to reconnect with yourself and with nature, to gain perspective on business and life challenges. He helps provide structure to this process with thoughtful questions to ponder and exercises to do. The chance to simply sit and reflect in the deep-space of Springwood without the distractions of everyday life is a precious gift that I would encourage anyone undergoing a significant period of stress or change in their life to embrace.
I have emerged a more connected leader. I think I am kinder, with a bit less ego ( I still have work to do there!), and more empathetic and patient. My way of dealing with complexity has subtly upgraded. I am really grateful to know that Giles is there and I can go back to refresh my world view and call upon his intuitive business insights at any time. It is a remarkable and valuable resource for any business owner to draw on.
In this world of constant competition, high-octane performance and unrelenting pressure, why wouldn’t you take a little time out to reconnect with what really matters? Giles provides the wisdom, space and intuition to do just that.
For more on coaching with Giles, visit his website here.
You can also sign up to his newsletter here.
There is a special one-off overnighter immersion with Giles at Springwood Farm on 23/24th May, see here for more details.
Giles Hutchins is leadership coach and author of five books on Regenerative Leadership, and Business Inspired by Nature. His latest book and podcast series Leading by Nature can be found here.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for conscious leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, certified in Adult Developmental Harthill LDF, and other modalities.
“Leading by Nature is a truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature. Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds. This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy
You can join the LinkedIn Immersions Group here
The poetic words of Rainer Maria Rilke ring deep inside me as I sit on the earth with spring bursting forth around me amid a world full of tumultuous change:
‘Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once; to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.’
To be at one with the earth – this, I feel, is the task of our time. To attune with how nature works, and to truly be here at one with life. To be fully human, completely, even if only once, in the moment and then off again into the voice-in-the-head’s dis-ease.
To fully participate, presence and regenerate with life is a radical healing act where we draw ourselves into life and feed the dreaming, weaving, reciprocating heart-work of humanity.
I have long been of the view that humanity has the hope, healing-potential and consciousness needed to turn a corner and right itself by rekindling our love of life.
Our mainstream industrialised, colonialised, rationalised head-based reductive scientism unweaves, pulls apart, distorts, fragments, corrupts and dis-eases our self-other-world connectivity, causing a corrosive carcinogenic consciousness that infects business, politics, socioeconomics and beyond.
Our prevalent way of seeing the world uproots us, tuning us out from our soul-sense of place and purpose, emptying the world of meaning, and superficializing our daily experience of life.
Today, mass globalized consumerism lubricated by social media promotes a dumbing-down distraction away from soul-life while inflating egoic-narcissistic tendencies. Enter the ‘hungry ghost’ syndrome of desiring ever-more, never quite satisfied, existentially insecure, ungrounded, uprooted, off-kilter. Not just the dearth of celebrity culture, reality TV-shows, newspapers/gossip-papers, but also art and music these days have become superficialized. Most pop music tunes trending these days are AI-generated, automated copying-pasting of trending jiggles hacked into ‘new’ tunes to make fashionable yet flaccid hits that grab our attention like a sugar-rush. Even the food we consume has lost much of its taste and essential nutrition due to its mass production. This perishing of what really matters degrades our lived experience at every level. We get caught up in short-lived superficiality, distracted from what really matters, trampling over life in vain attempts to seek happiness ‘out there’. According to recent polls the majority of people in the ‘developed world’ are disenfranchised. Yet this consumerist dream of the ‘good life’ is being busily exported to every corner of the world, pulling more and more of humanity away from any real and lasting sense of at-oneness with earth.
Life is an utterly amazing and deeply sacred experience. We knew this truth early on in life, and if we quieten ourselves for a moment, we can recall this inner-knowing. Each evolving year, season, moon-cycle, sunrise and sunset, meaning-making moment and pregnant pause, is the meditation worthy of our contemplation. No app required. Life IS the meditation.
Life invites our intentional attentiveness, an act of love that heals and recovers our self-other-world connectivity.
The repairing and renewing of our fragmented corrupted world can not only happen ‘out there’ through externalised fixings and fittings through sustainability solutions, but also ‘in here’ in the quality of consciousness, our intentional attentiveness to the ephemeral-yet-eternal experience of life. Inside us is the doorway into the immensity of interbeing, where our sense of place and purpose finds rootedness within the rhizome of regeneration right inside the rapture of reality.
‘The one who looks outside dreams. The one who looks inside awakens.’ Carl Jung
The time has come to awaken. As above, so below; as within, so without.
The regeneration of nature and the regeneration of human-nature go hand-in-hand. Nature’s wisdom is informing the organised energy-matter of all forms and beings. An unfolding intentionality of negentropic creative evolutionary becoming, steeped in purposefulness and meaning. Try and pull out human consciousness from nature and disaster, dis-ease and degradation ensue. Its time to reconnect humankind’s consciousness with nature’s wisdom, not in some retarded backward devolutionary retrograde attempt harking back to a bygone era before our digitized mechanized ego-explosion, but in a future-fit up-stretch that digs deep and transmutes post-modernity through a threshold-crossing waking-up process of becoming truly human in this more-than-human world.
‘In times of great winds, some build bunkers, others build windmills.’ Chinese proverb
Its time to build windmills, to work with the grain of nature, not against it, to long for the immensity of the mystery and meaning innate in each evolving moment of our lives.
It is through life, through our daily experience, through our connection with the earth and our self-other-world right-relation that we find our sense of place and purpose in the world, and through this quality of consciousness we enter into the Era of Regeneration.
Amid stormy seas, seismic turbulence and great winds ahead, we can consciously choose to either hold-on ever tighter to the old, or learn to enter into the regenerative potential of life itself, and in so doing find out who we truly are, individually and as a humanity.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin
This regenerative leadership quest is to see with new eyes, to become sensitized to the magnificence of existence and learn to trust in life, all the while drawing upon our capacity to make things happen ‘out there’ through our regenerative, sustainability and people & culture initiatives.
Leadership, ultimately, is about co-creating futures that enable us to become who we truly are—Homo sapiens, wise beings participating within this sentient, interconnected world we call home. The very gift that gives us free-will, self-reflexivity, and self-agency (the ego) is the very challenge we need to tame and train individually and collectively. It’s an untamed ego running amok that lies at the root of our manifold crises.
Artist: Jodie Harburt https://www.jodieharburt.com/
Collectively as a species, and individually as leaders in our organizations, we are at a critical time. This supreme moment, ripe for metamorphosis invites us to courageously open into nature within and all around us. Or we can choose to hold back with fear, reactivity, superficiality and separateness, and in doing so undermine the evolutionary potential innate within life. Our attention is a moral act. Our choices have moral implications. Every moment opens up the opportunity to attend to life with love or fear, with grace or dis-ease, with conscious sensing-responding or reactive controlling-managing. How we attend to the world shapes our world and in turn shapes us. The time has come.
Are you up for the Regeneration Revolution?
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Contact me for bespoke team and individual coaching here
For more detailed case studies, tools and processes see my latest book Leading by Nature, The Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for conscious leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, certified in Adult Developmental Harthill LDF, and other modalities.
“A truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature. Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds. This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy
“Leading by Nature gets to the heart of the shift in leadership that is now required to create a sustainable future for humanity.” – Richard Barrett, Director of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values.
“This book is a must-read for those involved in the future of business. I can’t recommend Giles’s work highly enough.” – Norman Wolfe, CEO of Quantum Leaders and author of The Living Organization: Transforming Business to Create Extraordinary Results
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book that will inspire all those whose role it is to champion resilience and adaptability, ethical commercial development, wellbeing in the workplace and the nurturing of a moral compass.” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
If you are interested in engaging in an embodied experience of regenerative leadership in practice, this special two-day deep-dive on regenerative leadership may be of interest to you, on 23-24th May 2024, amid ancient woodlands near London, with easy access from airports and international rail links, see here for more information: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2024/02/21/leading-by-nature-a-deep-dive-into-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness/
Finding our Way Home to Wholeness
My oh my, there seem to be a plethora of initiatives bubbling up these days across the leadership and organizational development (L&OD) terrain. What with emotional intelligence, mindfulness, personal and organizational resilience, sustainability, social entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship, conscious leadership, evolutionary-teal organizations, net-positive strategies, regenerative design, biomimicry, ESG, corporate responsibility, circular economics, agile ways of working, self-managing systems, JEDI (justice, equality, diversity & inclusion), regenerative business, conscious capitalism, feminine leadership, and more, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. What common ground inter-relates all these initiatives? Are they all aspects of a general shift toward something?
Sometimes, amid the stresses and strains of leading amid these fast-moving climes, we can overlook the forest for the trees, missing the unifying theme within this bubbling cacophony of terminology. All these initiatives are part-and-parcel of the same evolutionary up-stretch in leadership and organizational development (L&OD) consciousness, from ego-centricity to human-centricity to life-centricity.
This L&OD evolution rides on the back of a wider system-worldview evolution. How we see the world, and our sense of place and purpose within it, is shape-shifting.
We are undergoing a metamorphosis no less. To use the caterpillar/butterfly analogy: the caterpillar is inured in a mechanistic mindset of the dominant status-quo which actually sets us apart from nature and corrupts our potential for harmony with life; the butterfly struggling to be born in our own selves and in our organizational systems is one that seeks integration and harmony with life, aka = a regenerative mindset. This ‘regenerative mindset’ is not new, it’s not something that’s be born out of a small group of practitioners over recent decades, its ancient and yet fresh, its timeless and yet very much of-this-time. Afterall, this is about attuning with life on Earth – nothing more nothing less. Ancient minds have come up with regenerative insights thousands of years before modern minds started toying with the term.
Worldview: Mechanistic Regenerative
Consciousness: Separateness Relational interconnectedness
L&OD Metaphor: Organization-as-machine Organization-as-living-system
L&OD Dynamic: Control-manage Sense-respond
(source: G. Hutchins, Leading by Nature, 2022)
A shift from a mechanistic to regenerative worldview can give us a nice-and-neat sense of what’s going on, but this technical terminology may mean precious little, in actual fact miss-the-entire-point, if it’s not recognised as an embodied lived experience.
So – what does this evolution in worldview really mean in terms of how we attend to life? That’s what we explore here in this article, with sign-posts for those who desire deeper exploration.
“The greatest voyage of our lifetimes is not in the seeking of new landscapes but in the seeing with new eyes.” Marcel Proust
For the vast portion of our human history we’ve lived in deep communion with nature, attuned to the way nature works. Not a rational-analytic quantized set of facts and figures of ecosystem services mapped into bioregions, but the practical know-how our ancestors possessed was underpinned by a deep qualitative, relational and psycho-spiritual attunement to the rhythms and resonances of nature. The physical AND metaphysical quality of nature went hand-in-hand.
For many centuries, science in the West and East drew from a metaphysical cosmology that understood a depth of dimensionality to nature. Humans were seen as innately part of nature’s ensemble and yet with the seemingly unique self-reflectivity to either fall-out of rhythm or learn to consciously attune with the wisdom of nature. Harmony was the guiding principle for ancient traditions the world-over, and defined through a metaphysical comprehension of nature. For instance: Daoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Vedanta, Zen, Buddhism, Sufism, Tantra, and such like in the East and Alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbalism, Pythagorean-Platonic, Gnostic, Druidic and such like in the West. All these traditions are shamanic in origin and centre around the practice of attuning with nature/cosmos in order to be in right-relation with life, just like the core shamanism found throughout indigenous peoples across the world today. All of these ancient wisdom traditions and present-day shamanic practices of indigenous peoples are rooted in a worldview of Animism where nature is seen as sacred – all life is informed by an animating spirit or primordial ‘tune’ which is both transcendent (beyond space-time) and immanent (here in-the-now). Cultivating our consciousness to become more transparent to the transcendent and intimate with the immanent wisdom in nature brings harmony for self/other/world. Nature is experienced as not just ‘out there’ perceptible only to the senses as a purely physical dimension, but also metaphysical with a depth of interiority connected to ‘in here’ through an open heart whereupon we attune with a wisdom that enacts eternal myths and archetypal narratives amid everyday life-experiences.
To no longer sense the sacred metaphysical dimension of nature is to fall out-of-tune with nature, and in-turn corrupt our humanity, lose our way, become sick individually and societally, and forget who we truly are.
“We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.“ Talmud
This ‘losing our way’ is a Journey of Separation that has defined the Western mindset over recent centuries. The separation of spirit from nature corrupts the science that flows from the 17th Century Scientific Revolution onwards. Today’s mechanistic science is flawed and yet lauded as the upholder of truth throughout society. As the Persian scientist Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes, today’s Western science is divorced completely from any ontological aspect other than pure quantity. The metaphysical aspect of nature is all-but overlooked, or even mocked as mere superstition. Science today is utilitarian, a tool to support human utilisation of a de-animated nature for material betterment, whether it be dressed-up in ethical reasoning or economic motive. There can be no metamorphosis into ‘regeneration’ without a recognition of nature in all its fullness of depth.
Even our present-day Theory of Evolution – which most of us have taken-for-granted as set-in-stone fact, passing-it on to our own children without a thought to question it – is a theory based on this flawed science of Mechanistic-Materialism which ignores the essence of things, and condones all kinds of exploitation in the name of evolution-development-progress. As we expand our worldview, and begin once again to open our minds and hearts more deeply into nature, we are now noticing the gaping holes today’s Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution is littered with.
I have written extensively elsewhere about the Journey of Separation of the Western mindset and the purpose of this article is not to revisit the whys-and-wherefores of the desacralisation of nature in the West but rather to shine a light on the vitality of welcoming-in the metaphysical dimension of nature so our contemporary (r)evolution in worldview can become truly regenerative.
(For those interested in a comprehensive exploration of Western worldview development see The Illusion of Separation, and for a brief canter through Western worldview shifts of Animism à Greco-Medieval à Mechanistic-Materialism à Quantum-Complexity see this recent blog article.)
The beginnings of the twentieth century witnessed the breakdown of classical physics so foundational to Mechanistic-Materialism. Yet the spiritual force within the Western psyche was not potent enough to integrate this new science into a more universal and organic perspective – until now.
Throughout the 20th century and into this 21st century, discovery after discovery has aided the breakdown/breakthrough of a 400yr-old mechanistic worldview into a new one struggling to be born. For instance: breakthroughs in psychology – developmental, integral, transpersonal, depth, ecological psychology, etc.; in biology – facilitation ecology, Gaia theory, biomimicry, biophilia, etc.; in systems science – general systems theory, complexity theory, complex adaptive systems theory, living-systems theory, holistic science, etc.; in systems design – systemic design thinking, ecosystemic innovation, regenerative design, etc.; in L&OD – teal-evolutionary, deliberately developmental organizations, organizations-as-living-systems, regenerative leadership, etc.; and across so many other domains like health & wellbeing, economics, agriculture, urban planning, social sciences there are similar breakdown/breakthroughs.
Yet when sifting through these shifts it can become all-too-easy to get absorbed by the facts, figures, frameworks, models and methods, busying ourselves with new principles and processes while overlooking the metaphysical ground-shift required in our consciousness: an ontological-shift in our very being from ‘self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with’ into ‘self-as-participating-within’ life.
Is the spiritual potency within the human psyche yet mature enough to integrate all this breakdown/breakthrough into an ontological metamorphosis that is grounded in a truly holistic and regenerative way of being-in-the-world? I believe this time has come. The metaphysical dimension of nature is becoming available to us once again, and welcoming-in the sacredness of life will tip-the-scales of this necessary (r)evolution in human consciousness.
Transcending-and-Including the Mechanistic Mind
In reawakening our capacity to connect with the metaphysical animating-force within nature, we are ‘transcending-and-including’ the mechanistic mind. The tools and capabilities we have gained through the Journey of Separation are not thrown-away but evolved into a deeper worldview context, a more life-centric rather than anthropocentric/humanist one. The reductive mechanistic tool we have honed through the Scientific Revolution (along with all the technological advancements in digitisation, medicine, transportation and so forth that we benefit from today) is still available to us, but as a tool we can pick-up and put-down rather than totalizing over our way-of-being. We transcend the allure of mechanistic dominance by reconnecting to the rapture of reality, and begin to gain perspective on mechanistic reductionism as a useful tool that can serve life, rather than life serving it – a tool that aids our regeneration rather than distracting us toward further fragmentation and separation.
To give an example for illustrative purposes: the rising interest in blue-green nature economics based on quantizing nature’s ecosystem services into a value-based model that attracts impact investment. If this is utilised by a Mechanistic-Materialistic consciousness then this quantization of nature ignores the intrinsic sacred quality of nature, with ‘ecosystems’ and ‘bioregions’ mechanised into quantized ‘services’ that serve human utility. However, this does not then mean that the quantization of ecosystem services is inherently wrong or degenerative, as it can be a tool that helps serve the Regenerative (R)evolution. To banish, polarize and judge the mechanistic in this way would be no better than the Scientific Revolution’s banishment of the relational and metaphysical dimension of nature. What the metamorphosis into regeneration holds-space for is an integration, a transcending-and-including of what came before it, not just a swinging of the pendulum against history in a purely ‘revolutionary’ dynamic, but a spiralling integrative metamorphic ‘(r)evolutionary’ dynamic that shape-shifts while learning and integrating earlier phases of the caterpillar into the butterfly. We have a mechanistic left-brain hemisphere for a reason and yet it ought to serve the more relational and nature-attuned insights of the right-hemisphere tapped into heart awareness/bodymind coherence.
Back to our blue-green nature economics example – if the rise of impact investment in ecosystem services is a tool that serves the quest for life-affirming futures then it is a useful tool for the regenerative journey ahead, as long as it finds itself within a deeper consciousness that respects life as inherently sacred and intrinsically qualitative (not just quantized/mechanized). The nature-economics tool ensures ecosystems are not valued at zero and so plundered without any mechanism of value-based economics to save it. Though to merely expand mechanistic domination for impact investment to plunder the last great frontier of capitalism’s exploitation of life is not a regenerative tool but a caterpillar-mind at work. Discerning the difference comes from an inner-knowing of what feels true to our being – an ontological undertaking.
So, we may see that the metamorphic movement is not a neat-and-tidy linear transition from mechanistic to regenerative, it’s more a spiralling inward-outward transcending-and-including integrative process of reawakening a deeper inner-outer awareness of nature’s animating metaphysical quality, while allowing the modern mechanistic tool to serve an expanding consciousness from ego-centric to anthropocentric to life-centric.
It is clear to me that while the regenerative movement is gaining traction across myriad disciplines, more attention needs to be given to the metaphysical aspect of this necessary (r)evolution. A deeper awareness of psyche/nature/cosmos is rebirthing within us. Regenerative leaders and practitioners are being invited to open their hearts and up-stretch their bodyminds to attune with the inherent wisdom in nature, and truly embody the Journey of Reconnection beyond separation.
No worldview shift can be truly regenerative without deepening our transparency with the transcendent and intimacy with the immanent nature of reality within and all around us. This is at once a profoundly personal embodied experience and a relational-communal affair. Through the inward connection to the metaphysical essence of nature within and all around us (aka: ‘Nature’s Wisdom’) a simultaneous felt-sense immanence and super-sensory transcendence engages us with quality beyond quantity, and a force without form that informs all form. To gain an embodied sense of this is vital as we journey back home to our true nature.
Nature’s Metaphysics Applied to Regenerative L&OD
Metaphysical realisation is first-and-foremost an embodied experience, not a head-based formulation. With this caveat, I offer some words that can provide sign-posts into the metaphysical dimension of organizations-as-living-systems. The 5 E’s – Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary & Enthusiasm. There is a lot in these 5 E’s and for a full write up, see this article here – a short summary of the 5 E’s is offered below:
Essence: accessing the metaphysical dimension by tuning-in to the essential nature within self and system.
Energy: Becoming conscious of and sensitive to the life-force patterns and rhythms infusing and radiating through self and system. So as to enliven, heal and renew the regenerative capacities of the living-organization.
Emergence: life unfolds through emergence – a ‘process of becoming’ more fully in-tune/in-flow by working with micro-emergence/meso-emergence/macro-emergence tools and practices.
Evolutionary: Contrary to popular belief, evolution is not a chain-reaction but a flow-response with spiraling phase-change sense-respond dynamics influencing the developmental capacity of self and system. We can learn to work with these evolutionary dynamics in order to better realise the evolutionary potential and purpose of the living-organization toward life-affirming futures.
Enthusiasm: To attend to life with an intentional attentiveness – one might say, a loving phenomenological inquiry – involves enthusiasm at the soul-level, which makes our own life-experience and learning journey magnitudes richer and also benefits those we touch and connect with. we become regenerators through essence-energy-emergence-evolutionary enthusiasm. We learn to liv in accord with Nature’s Wisdom, and send positive regenerative ripples through our way of being and doing.
As said, there is much to all this and words on a screen simply don’t do this justice. The primacy here is an embodied experience of Nature’s Wisdom. The simple intention of this article is to highlight the vital importance of welcoming-in the metaphysical dimension into the Regenerative (R)evolution.
To summarise:
We are living amid a once-in-a-civilisation metamorphic moment. The time has come to awaken from mechanistic slumber and remember the sacred sentience of life each and every day. This is not some wishful-thinking utopia. Movements across the world are already mobilising toward this deeper connection, and nothing less than the future of humanity is at stake (let alone the future of the vast proportion of biodiversity on Earth).
It’s also a time of great distraction with powerful forces pulling us toward transhumanist anthropocentric degenerative futures. Think of the billions (some estimate trillions!) being invested in alternate realities, algorithmic digitized transactions, smart devices continuously connected to a global infrastructure called ‘smart planet’, the exponential rise of satellites rocket-fuelled into orbit each month, and micro-sensors erected at every street corner to track-and-trace our every move for ‘surveillance capitalism’. This is not some dystopian rhetoric, it the reality right now on this planet pulling us further toward fragmentation and separation, if we so choose.
Yet the blackest hour brings the dawn; a time of rising awareness about the real depth of this reality we call life, whereupon we learn to work with the wisdom of nature rather than against it.
This dawn consists of a simultaneous inner-outer awakening – shifting our own inner self-awareness and our outer systemic-awareness of how living-systems really work beyond the confines of Mechanistic-Materialism. This inner-outer awakening is not simply an intellectual comprehension of living-systems-thinking, it’s a psychological and embodied undertaking; a metamorphosis that endures for months/years as our consciousness deepens in becoming more life-centric.
Through more than 12 years of exploring regenerative leadership in practice, I have found that the most psychologically safe yet powerful way to aid this inner-outer shift is through nature-based immersions.
This is why I’m hosting a special 2-day immersion in the secluded ancient woodlands of Springwood Farm on 23-24th May (secluded yet within easy access to international trains/planes) to immerse in consciousness-raising practices, an overnight solo experience, and tools specifically designed to aid leaders and practitioners on their regenerative leadership journey.
If you wish to be a part of this small-group summer immersion you can find more information about it here – places are very limited and allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis. Participants will gain a certificate at the end of the immersion certifying their engagement in this embodied experience.
‘The best leadership course I’ve ever attended.’ – Ian Ayling, CMO, Wilco
‘Life-changing.’ – Jayne Mayled, Managing Director, True Story
‘I felt I’ve been in the presence of a real master.’ – Simon Milton, CEO, Pulse Brands
‘Magical.’ – Sue Cheshire, CEO, Global Leaders Academy
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practicioner.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for regenerative leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
“Leading by Nature is a must-read for those involved in the future of business. I can’t recommend Giles’s work highly enough.” – Norman Wolfe, CEO of Quantum Leaders and author of The Living Organization: Transforming Business To Create Extraordinary Results
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
For more on Leading by Nature, the book and podcast series, and also for more on Giles Hutchins’s coaching serves, see https://gileshutchins.com/leadingbynature/
Cultivating An Agile Regenerative Business Culture: DEE – Developmental, Emergent, Evolutionary
There is an increasingly pressing need these days to cultivate organizational cultures that are able to adapt, learn and thrive amid increasingly complexity and transformative.
The acronym VUCA – Volatile Uncertain Complex & Ambiguous – is no longer something to speak about on stage at a conference, it’s the lived reality for any organization operating on the world-stage today.
Yet, how do we encourage our leaders, teams, organizational participants, to not merely ‘cope amid complexity’ but to actually ‘thrive amid complexity’?
This is the inquiry I have been exploring for a couple of decades now culminating in my regenerative leadership & organizational development – Regenerative L&OD – work, and latest book Leading by Nature, the Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader.
What I’ve found through working with hundreds of leaders and their organizations, across all sectors and sizes, globally and locally is that, when we cultivate a DEE culture, then the organization and its people thrive amid complexity, unlocking potential and empowering teams to adapt and evolve in a fast-paced ever-changing business climate. So, what is a DEE culture?
DEE = Developmental, Emergent, Evolutionary. A Developmental-Emergent-Evolutionary (DEE) organization navigates for future-fitness in applying a living-systems mindset and therefore by definition is on the journey toward becoming a regenerative business.
In defining these three organizational qualities, I draw from many disciples arising out of the Quantum-Complexity breakthrough, such as systems thinking, non-linear dynamics, complex adaptive systems, living-systems, biomimicry, regenerative design, self-organizing systems, systemic coaching, quantum management, learning organizations, adult developmental psychology, and the related fields of conscious, adaptive, systemic, servant, spiritual, regenerative and quantum leadership. Let’s dive-in to each of these three key organizational qualities.
Developmental
The living-organization is constantly learning, developing, creating, renewing and growing amid an ever-changing environment. By ‘developmental growth’ we do not mean the maximization of scale, production and profit, we mean growth through psychological and relational development by becoming more integrated and authentic in our relationships – inter-personal, inter-team, inter-organization, inter-stakeholder. This means a deepening understanding of authenticity and purposefulness in ourselves as leaders and also across the organizational culture. Developmental organizations celebrate learning. Everyone in the organization has the opportunity to develop. This requires organizational and leadership capacities that create psychologically safe yet developmentally challenging environments for everyone to feel able to develop, learn and grow in ways true to themselves.
There is a healthy tension to be found in applying overarching governance and top-down framing within which the developmental culture lives-and-breaths, while allowing for bottom-up diversity, self-organization and personal freedom in how people attend to their own learning, adapt to local issues, and make informed decisions without too much top-down interference. We each take self-responsibility for finding our own way of integrating learning into the everyday rhythm of organizational life through the alchemy of self-awareness-in-action and systemic-awareness-in-action, enabling each of us to feel able to pause, listen, notice, reflect, feedback, share learnings, co-create, collaborate, and grow individually and collectively.
Essentially, it’s about inviting people to treat everyday conversations as reciprocal learning explorations, where we intentionally create non-judgemental two-way learning, through how we listen, speak, ask open-questions, use non-violent communication methods, bridging language, generative dialogue techniques, and a frame of inquiry. We approach conversations with a participatory attitude of listening, exploring and learning together rather than a transactional attitude of identifying, solving and fixing before something deeper might emerge through the conversation. Just as helpful are feedback methods like 360-degree feedback and feedback circles. Relationships are powerful ways for helping us see inner shadows and blind-spots as we often project ‘our stuff’ on to others, and so others can see learning-areas we may not be conscious of. As we become more authentic in our relationships, we help serve the living-organization and its creative potential, while manifesting life-affirming futures right here in the present moment. The developmental journey starts where we are at, in how we are showing-up for each conversation and meeting.
Key words characteristics for Developmental: Learning, reflection-in-action, feedback, coaching.
Emergence
Emergence is the way life unfolds. As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, its nature’s creative advance. All living-systems express themselves through the self-generating self-organizing property of emergence. Organizations are no different in their need to creatively adapt to an ever-changing context.
Emergence is propelled by tensions. Tensions create anxiety in us that stimulate and cajole us out of the status-quo and into emergence. Tensions arise between the space of divergence (diverse perspectives) and convergence (alignment around purpose and values). The sweet-spot between divergence and convergence creates emergence – not too much divergence (or chaos ensues) and not too much convergence (or rigidity forms). Living-systems thrive on this edge of chaos-order, and it’s this edge that enables adaptability and vitality across the living-organization. Dee Hock, former CEO and Chairman of VISA uses the term ‘chaordic’ to describe this alchemy of chaos (divergence) and order (convergence). He views this chaordic sweet-spot as the essential organizational ingredient for future-fitness; it’s helped VISA be consistently successful in a fast-evolving market-place.
Tensions challenge us to grow yet if we are too stressed or overwhelmed by too much divergence, we burn-out or switch-off. This is one good reason why the living-organization’s developmental culture is so important because it provides psychologically safe yet demanding environments for everyone to embrace complexity and grow through tensions. The developmental culture creates the right space for tensions to be held, observed and allowed to unfold in ways that provide the right learning and growing environment for diverse people with different stress and anxiety tolerances. Reduce anxiety all together and you take out tensions, and the organization loses its life-force to adapt and evolve.
Divergence occurs through greater levels of self-management, personal freedom and responsibility. This allows people to adapt quickly and locally to tension and affect change right where it’s needed without the cumbersome need for chains of command. Yet contrary to popular opinion, self-management does not mean the absence of structure, work-flow processes or rules. This is where convergence comes in, stimulated through clarity of purpose and values, methods of communicating and collaborating, meeting practices, decision-making and advice-seeking processes, group dialogue practices, feedback and learning methods, and more.
As well as encouraging self-management, divergence is stimulated across the organization by encouraging a diversity of perspectives by working across boundaries, encouraging people to go to the edges of the system, and engage with a variety of departments, specialists and external stakeholder groups. For instance, visiting frontline operations, liaising with different customers segments, and engaging with diverse groups of people in society, ensuring diversity in age, creed, culture, gender and sexual orientation, all of this brings divergence that can unleash energy and insight. There are practices like stakeholder dialogue interviews, World Café and Future Search workshops that help with this. In particular I have found dialogue to be a powerful way of allowing tensions of difference to be worked through into emergence of creativity and innovation. The word ‘dialogue’ comes from the Greek dia meaning ‘through’ and logos meaning ‘relating through words’. In dialogue we relate to each other’s perspectives by empathically listening and sharing. Often I hold-space for dialogue circles whether in the boardroom or round the campfire in nature. Instead of asserting a view or attempting to persuade the other as in debate, one is opening into a space of listening, sharing and respecting another’s feelings and perspectives, holding-space for what wants to emerge between the differences of opinion.
Our everyday conversations provide creative-crucibles for noticing and reflecting (self-awareness-in-action). Learning to sense-in to the interplay of interactions across the system (systemic-awareness-in-action) and noticing how we cope with our own and other’s anxiety in working through tensions (developmentally safe yet demanding environments) is the continuous work-in-practice each day, every moment. Mistakes are simply opportunities to reflect, learn and grow.
Key word characteristics for Emergence: Divergence-convergence, holding-tensions, conflict-transformation, self-management, dialogue
Evolutionary
The more we journey toward regeneration, the more we realise that the living-organization is continuously adjusting and adapting both within its self with its external environment through relationships. Everything is in continuous participation with everything else. This is quite a shift from feeling the need to compete, assert, control and survive. We begin to ask – how can I best help the organization become a truer version of itself?
Psychological energy that was consumed by the need to relentlessly ‘achieve’ in order to better one’s career, status, salary and personal ambition is now flowing into a deeper listening-in to what really serves the organization and its deeper purpose beyond hitting-the-numbers. What is the organization really here to do and be? The more we become attuned with the systemic dynamics within the organization, the more we sense what best serves the evolutionary potential of the organization and what is holding it back from serving its purpose.
For the organization, the shift in focus is from profits to purpose. For sure, profit is vital for any business, yet healthy profits flow from purpose not the other ways round. I like the analogy of breathing: we need to breathe to live and yet breathing is not our reason for living. The organization needs to live by generate healthy profits, yet that’s not its reason for living. As Brian Robertson, founder of the consultancy Holacracy explains, we need to learn to listen and tune-in to the evolutionary purpose of the organization and ‘the key is about separating identity and figuring out “what is the organization’s calling?” Not “what do we want to use this organization to do, as property?” but rather “what is this living system’s creative potential?” That’s what we mean by evolutionary purpose: the deepest creative potential to bring something new to life, to contribute something energetically, valuably to the world…It’s that creative impulse or potential that we want to tune into, independent from what we want ourselves.’
As well as receptively listening to what wants to emerge while tuning-in to the underlying evolutionary purpose of the living-organization, we can also proactively scan the future horizon. In Leading by Nature, I explore a comprehensive toolkit that draws upon foresight, backcasting, scenario-planning, system mapping, stakeholder interviews and other tools to form a systematic approach to Systemic Innovation by identifying emerging trends that resonate with the evolutionary purpose of the organization. This combined capacity of anticipating the future horizon a few years hence while being ever-receptive to the emerging future right before us helps ensure evolutionary fitness.
Key word characteristics for Evolutionary: Sensing-in, listening to the living-organization’s evolutionary purpose
Embracing the Tensions of Life
For Regenerative L&OD we embrace everyday life as a creative learning process, a constant dialogue of self-other-world. This is what DEE enables, a constant noticing, sensing, creating and evolving.
As the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, notes, ‘whatever is flexible and flowing will continue to evolve, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die’.
In this urgent-age, we need patience and trust to forge symbiotic relationships where we evolve in life-affirming ways together. Yet with the emerging IoT we can also form loosely coupled affiliations across social media with diverse communities of interest. While such loose affiliations are easier to pick-up and drop, they still have an impact on the brand, influencing how people might perceive us. Actively sensing across the system with regular dialogue across diverse community groups helps discern which affiliations feel right and which do not. This is a moveable feast, and so regular system-scanning helps sense what’s emerging in this fast-paced, hyper-connective yet often distracting and confusing field of possibilities.
The proliferation of differing and often highly-polarized and politicized perspectives can lead to emotive exchanges. Rather than dialogue, people get ensnared on heated debate and us-versus-them polarity ensues. When, as leaders, we get distracted by social media or whipped-up into polarized right-versus-wrong feelings we undermine our capacity to sense-in to the system and make a wise holistic appraisal of the underlying tensions at play. As leadership specialist Deborah Rowland notes, ‘This trend to exclude the other, to eliminate difference, or ban people whose views you don’t like is not conducive to open inquiry and deeper systemic perception. When we stand in judgement of something, or someone, it breeds wider division as we fail to see the system from which the target of our dislike originates.’
Throughout life, nature and human nature we find tensions. By illuminating the inherent tension within each of the three DEE qualities, we can start to understand the nuances involved in truly embodying a regenerative culture in practice. Let’s take a look at three tensions inherent in DEE.
Developmental Tension – One side of the tension is ‘psychological safety’. The other end of the tension is ‘developmentally challenging’. We need both. The point of the tension is not to allow one side to dominate and so collapse the tension, but rather to hold the tension open in order to work with the energetic-emergent-evolutionary force impelled through the tension. If we focus on ‘psychological safety’ too much, without enough energy given to creating a ‘developmentally challenging’ environment, then we drift toward passive-aggressive collectivism. The culture feels stuck, where people may feel ‘safe’ by remaining in their comfort zone, rather than being catalysed to courageously go through the fear-zone into the learning and growth zones.
(Source – this image is adapted from one of the posters Vivobarefoot uses as part of its People & Culture immersions with Giles Hutchins & Vivo’s Head of Transformation, Ashley Pollock, amid the ancient woodlands of Springwood Farm – see a series of short videos here sharing aspects of Vivobarefoot’s approach to Regenerative L&OD, called ‘Living Barefoot’)
Emergent Tension – One side of the tension is ‘divergence’, the other side of the tension is ‘convergence’. As explored above, we need the sweet-spot of divergence and convergence. Think of them as two sides of the river, holding the tension so the river of emergence can flow, allowing for a future-fit agile living-organization to continually adapt and thrive amid an ever-changing landscape. We need BOTH convergence (structure, roles/responsibilities, decision-making protocols, etc.) AND divergence (self-managing, relationality across silos, dialogue, creative explorations, out-of-the-box thinking).
Evolutionary Tension – One side of the tension is ‘self’, the other side of the tension is ‘system’. We need a cultivate a deeper sense of individual purposefulness, deeper self-awareness, and soul-connection with who we truly are AND a deepening relationality, connectedness and coherency with the teams and organizational systems we work with on a day-to-day basis. We learn to attune how our individual sense of purpose works with and, is aided by, the organization’s sense of purpose and vice versa. This comes with an opening in our meaning-making from individualistic-self into independence-AND-interdependence: we cultivate our own self-agency and empowerment through our self-aware purposefulness, yet deeply sense the systemic nature of life’s interdependence.
(Source – this image is adapted from one of the posters Vivobarefoot uses as part of its People & Culture immersions with Giles Hutchins & Vivo’s Head of Transformation, Ashley Pollock, amid the ancient woodlands of Springwood Farm – see a series of short videos here sharing aspects of Vivobarefoot’s approach to Regenerative L&OD, called ‘Living Barefoot’)
So, we can summarise the Regenerative DEE Culture as one that intentionally and actively inquires into the tensions of:
Psychologically safe AND developmentally challenging
Divergence AND convergence
Self-awareness AND systemic-awareness
Independence AND interdependence
Practical business examples are exponentially growing in number by the day. I have the real pleasure and honour to be directly assisting a wide range of different organizations across the globe on the regenerative journey – by example:
The B Corp consultancy Greenheart – who explain ‘Sustainability is no longer enough. For a meaningful transition to a future-fit economy we need more.’ With their expertise in B Corp, impact management & planetary health they help clients build businesses that are regenerative by nature. You can check out their work here.
The award-winning minimalist footwear and wellbeing brand Vivobarefoot – who say ‘Why is Vivobarefoot becoming a regenerative business? Because the status quo needs shaking up with actions that urgently revise ingrained, habitual approaches to commerce.’ You can check out their work here.
The insurance and professional service provider AXA Climate – who affirm ‘Reducing our negative impact on the planet is not enough. Our collective challenge is to switch from extractive companies to regenerative companies. To that end, we are transforming our business models, our organizations and our collective missions. And this transformation movement drives us.’ You can check out their work here.
The consultancy, footwear producer and insurance company (along with the investment bank, food retailer, design agency, fashion brand, manufacturer, creative agency, wellbeing provider, food charity, global corporation, local housing association, and many other diverse organizations I directly engage with on the regenerative journey) all share in common an authentic deeply-felt sense of the challenges and opportunities in unfolding toward becoming regenerative – to work the way nature works – not just in some theoretical way, but through practical methods enabling future-fitness, agility, entrepreneurialism and synergistic value throughout the business ecosystem, society and ecology.
For more detailed case studies, tools and processes see my latest book Leading by Nature, The Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for conscious leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, certified in Adult Developmental Harthill LDF, and other modalities.
“A truly exceptional and timely book that redefines the locus of power in relationship to leadership; leadership that seeks harmony and alignment with nature. Giles reminds us to bring awareness/presence to everything that unfolds. This book is the teacher we all need.” Sue Cheshire, Founder and former CEO of The Global Leaders Academy
“Leading by Nature gets to the heart of the shift in leadership that is now required to create a sustainable future for humanity.” – Richard Barrett, Director of the Barrett Academy for the Advancement of Human Values.
“This book is a must-read for those involved in the future of business. I can’t recommend Giles’s work highly enough.” – Norman Wolfe, CEO of Quantum Leaders and author of The Living Organization: Transforming Business To Create Extraordinary Results
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book that will inspire all those whose role it is to champion resilience and adaptability, ethical commercial development, wellbeing in the workplace and the nurturing of a moral compass.” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
If you are interested in engaging in an embodied experience of regenerative leadership in practice, this special two-day deep-dive on regenerative leadership may be of interest to you, on 23-24th May 2024, amid ancient woodlands near London, with easy access from airports and international rail links, see here for more information: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2024/02/21/leading-by-nature-a-deep-dive-into-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness/
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
Leading by Nature – A Deep-dive into Embodying Next-Stage Regenerative Leadership Consciousness
It’s a fascinating yet challenging time to be a leader. We are in the midst of an old system dying and a new one being born, all amid unceasing transformation – change upon change upon change is the new-norm. Yet as the genius Einstein knew, when we look deep in to nature we understand everything better; we see with new eyes and bring a different quality of consciousness to the solutions than that which created the problems in the first place.
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage future-fit leader.
On Thursday 23rd May-Friday 24th May 2024, I will host a special nature-based leadership immersion providing an embodied experience of Leading by Nature – The Process of Becoming A Regenerative Leader.
Two-day Deep-dive – Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th May – price £800 per person
This two-day overnight deep-dive is for leaders and practitioners who are either beginning on the exploration into regenerative leadership or who’ve already started to embark on the regenerative journey, perhaps through reading, reflecting, wintering, practicing it through work, and/or attending courses and journeys, or perhaps already attending a workshop at Springwood Farm. We shall be exploring the embodiment of regenerative leadership consciousness and providing advanced tools and techniques for your own work as a leader and for practitioners/coaches working with clients/leaders and regenerative L&OD.
‘Giles is an excellent teacher, facilitator and host – it’s been a tremendous honor to learn with him.’ – Simon Jones, Founder, Thrivemind Body & Whole
‘The nature immersion workshop with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘What an inspiring time in the woods Giles, a great balance of talking, contemplation, meditation, being in nature – Thank you so very much!’ –Participant, CEO of non-profit organization
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO of Pulse Brands
Two-Day 23rd May Deep-dive Immersion Logistics:
9.45am Arrivals Thursday 23rd May– refreshments upon arrival. Immersion commences at 10am
Overnight camping – either bring own tent (or there are some basic bivvy structures to keep out the rain, if do not wish to use a tent) 14hr solo experience immersed in ancient woodland
Friday 24th May – 3pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ Springwood Farm
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.30am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £800, first-come first-serve basis, once payment received your place is confirmed – To book your place either Direct Message Giles Hutchins on LinkedIn or contact him via his website https://gileshutchins.com/
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, you will be sent some preparatory material and guidance. Another email will also be sent near the immersion with further preparatory information.
You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire two-days, and the time includes a 14hr solo in nature for intentional work and reflection on your life-work/self & system. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- Specific practices to work with your living-system/organization/practice/life
- Exploration into your soul purpose and soul craft
- Energy cultivation and somatic practices carefully crafted for regenerative leadership
- 14hr solo in private ancient woodlands with pre-and-post reflection processing
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Tools for working with intention, intuition, insight and Nature’s Wisdom
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of any of Giles Hutchins 5 books
- Organic meals and refreshments throughout the two-days
- Follow-up reading material post immersion
- Certificate post-immersion to certify your attendance in this regenerative leadership immersion
‘Your deep immersion into nature opened our minds, opened our souls, to deeply connect with our place and purpose in life. With love and deep appreciation for your inspiration.’ – Sue Cheshire, Founder of the Global Leaders Academy
‘Powerful and provocative. The best leadership event I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, The Soil Association
‘Giles’ immersion at Springwood had a profound effect on me as CEO.’ – Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres in total, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://www.leadershipimmersions.com/gallery
After 14 months of lockdown, I joined Giles and others on a ‘Leadership Immersion’ at Giles’ magical and awe-inspiring 60 acre ancient woodland in West Sussex. Having read his last book – Regenerative Leadership, I had high expectations. They were surpassed, magnificently.
Giles took us on a journey that saw complete strangers enter into a state of connection, high trust and intimacy – in a matter of hours. We emerged nourished, energised, connected, centred and better equipped to deal with the challenges of life in the early ‘20s. For those seeking answers around their personal and professional development – I can’t recommend Giles and his work highly enough. – Richard Tyre, CEO of Good People
‘Giles’s blends business expertise, deep connection with nature and our living environment and experience in transformation, helping us think differently and progressively about work and organisational intent. He is magical in his ability to generate ‘safe spaces’ for conversations that matter’ – Caroline Gosling, Director, Rubica
About Giles Hutchins:
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016) and Regenerative Leadership (2019). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership center at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership, and guest lectures at international business schools. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org
The 23rd-24th May deep-dive immersion is a one-off open programme for 2024, and places are limited. Contact Giles on his website to book your place: https://gileshutchins.com/ or Direct Message him on LinkedIn
Beside parenting, starting and growing a business is without doubt the hardest job I’ve ever had. There are plenty of similarities of course: late nights, tantrums, constant demands on cash and the ever-present feeling that you’re never quite doing well enough.
But in many ways it’s also the most liberating. In my case, it provided a blank canvas on which I could start experimenting with a different style of organisational development; one based on trust, respect, instinct and interdependence. In short, one that felt more natural and authentic for me as a human being.
I’ve since learnt it’s called regenerative leadership and it’s totally changed my worldview.
At its heart, regenerative leadership seeks to answer the question: what would this organisation look like if we treated it like a living-system, not a machine? What if we applied the learnings of four billion years of evolutionary development to our companies so that they become inherently resilient, nimble and life-affirming? Just like nature.
When I started looking through this lens, I came to appreciate that most businesses are indeed run like machines: people as cogs, managers as operators and systems as user manuals in a clear and linear input -> output relationship. Striving for efficiency, management is characterised by a fear of failure with success measured primarily in numbers and charts as opposed to genuine societal and environmental value. It’s the opposite of life-affirming, it’s soul sapping and I’m convinced it is a key contributor to the many social & environmental messes we find ourselves in now.
Having spent the early part of my career in the organisation-as-machine paradigm – and hating it – I became committed to unleashing the living-being in the business I had been fortunate enough to found.
How did the journey begin?
When I realised that Greenheart, against my better judgment, wanted to grow I found myself at a T-junction: should I put a lid on it, stay solo and manage demand by cranking up my fees? Or should I listen to the universe and let it happen? Well, you try putting a cloche on an oak seedling. It’ll either die or break through its own ceiling pretty quickly.
I kicked off the cloche, drafted the first employment contracts and braced myself.
As the first large corporate clients came in and the team continued to grow, so did the need for systems and processes. IT, data security, time management, etc. all needed bedding in quickly. We had reached the next T-junction: should we a) dust off the traditional management playbook and start drafting linear org charts and policies, or b) do something different but uncertain and higher risk? Well, I think you know the answer to that…
My first call was to Giles Hutchins, one of the key shepherds of the regenerative leadership movement. Our friends and clients at Vivobarefoot had introduced me to his book Regenerative Leadership (co-authored with Laura Storm) and I had inhaled it more or less in one sitting. I reached out, not really expecting a reply, asking for urgent help.
“I have read your and Laura’s book (twice) and am deeply committed to building my own business ecosystem along regenerative lines…I’m at a pretty early stage in my understanding but want the whole team to be aligned from the off.”
That was almost three years ago and Giles has been my, and Greenheart’s, friend, guide and mentor ever since.
I’d be lying if I said the realities of growing a business during economic uncertainty hadn’t at points challenged my regenerative resolve really hard.
As a leader, especially an owner-leader, when you hit turbulence every instinct screams at you to grab hold of the joystick and fight until you’ve regained control. It’s also very tempting to close down the information flow so as not to concern people. When you operate an emergent self-managing system you can’t do any of that without breaking the inherent trust on which you’ve built the culture. Instead, you need to communicate more and trust more, but ensure that you’re providing the support, advice and frameworks for everyone to work to best effect. There is a very blurry line between that and direct top-down management and we definitely don’t always get it right. Equally, once you’ve empowered everyone to pull their weight, they need to do so and that’s not always a given.
Most people outside the business don’t know what you’re talking about – I’ve had a number of conversations this year with senior commercial people and/or prospective partners who just don’t get where we’re coming from. ‘Why are you so obsessed with nature? Where does that fit into the business model? You’ll never sell to a serious corporate client with that attitude.’ In a worst case scenario (e.g. if we’d had to get lifeline funding) we could have been forced to choose between our values and our survival.
Sometimes people inside the business aren’t quite sure what you’re talking about either – this is a new way of working for most people and it requires both support and guidance as they break out of the traditional management paradigm.
Increasingly your team DOES know what you’re talking about – and surrendering into the flow of life takes the sting out of the harsher realities. Example: around springtime we had a discussion about what we were calling the ‘commercial conundrum’ (a slower than expected Q1). We laid out the facts, neatly reduced in a good old fashioned left-brain way, and watched the blank faces stare back from the GoogleMeet screen. Then I put up a slide (below) asking ‘what would nature do’? Blow me down, not only did the faces light up but the ensuing discussion provided both concrete ideas and reassurance to people that we’d find a solution. (Side note: the discussion itself was fascinating but a topic for another chapter. If you’re interested, ‘Teeming’ by Tamsin Woolley-Barker is full of insights on this question.)
Because our style of regenerative leadership encourages collaborative innovation and creativity as normal behaviours, everyone is primed to expect – and deal with – the unexpected. As a result, a bit like a shoal of mackerel turning in sync from a threat, we can move quickly and together. We are naturally agile and this is incredibly helpful during tough times.
Most importantly, the sense of belonging, trust and togetherness that comes from doing things slightly differently is probably the most valuable asset at a time of scarcity. We forage together, always guarding each other’s backs, with the shared priority of keeping the ecosystem healthy.
So my experience so far is that the pros outweigh the cons and the confidence regenerative leadership has given me as an owner-leader has pulled me through some real challenges.
Thomas Bourne, Founder & Chief Ecosystem Officer, www.greenheartbusiness.com
If you wish to explore Regenerative Leadership further, there is a special deep-dive immersion with Giles Hutchins in the ancient woodlands of Springwood, West Sussex, close to London and airports/trains, Two-day Deep-dive – Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th May – price £800 per person, contact Giles Hutchins via his website for more information: https://gileshutchins.com/
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersion LinkedIn group here.
Seven Ways to Think Regeneratively in 2024
Seven Ways to Think Regeneratively, by Giles Hutchins – please note that the first six ways were recently published in the Great British Brands 2024 edition, with Editor Lucy Cleland, see here for the full article)
1 Think in systems, networks and relationships
Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been conditioned to think mechanistically, viewing our businesses as something to manage and control in a top-down fashion with push-pull, carrot-stick levers, exploiting assets (including ‘human resources’) for short-term returns. This system – of business as machine – tends to undermine the future-fitness of the organisation in increasingly volatile and fast-moving climes. When power and control reside at the top, decision-making becomes far removed from the customer, and employees too can feel disempowered, robotic and inauthentic. In fact, Harvard Business School research tells us most leaders and employees are doing a second job no one is paying them for – that of managing other people’s impressions of themselves, covering up their weaknesses, playing politics, hiding uncertainties. This is not a recipe for success, undermining our individual and collective brilliance. Therefore, it pays to begin to think of the organisation less as a machine and more as an ecosystem full of human connectivity – between employees, customers, suppliers, partners, advisors, investors, social media advocates, families and friends, local communities, ecologies, etc – with a reciprocity that thrives on trust. As a business leader, reflecting on and tuning into the inter-relational nature of these systems helps to sense where there’s flow, impasse or latency waiting to be realised, or opportunities for transformation. Rather than chief executive officer think chief ecosystem officer – constantly scanning the relational systems to sense where there’s emerging potential.
2 Recognise that the inner and outer aspects of the business are inextricably linked
The ‘inner-nature’ of the living-organisation is its culture – not some HR charter or values poster on the wall, but the day-to-day ways in which people show up, share, exchange tacit knowledge, gossip on social media, co-create and connect in and out of the office. The ‘outer-nature’ is its brand, external communications, PR, stakeholder relationships, and impact on various groups outside the business. Both natures are connected so it will show up clearly in either aspect whether or not a business truly values authenticity, encourages courageous conversations, gives constructive feedback and offers developmental learning, or keeps within the machine mindset. Successful businesses will be those that synergise the inner and outer aspects so that all elements feel deeply connected.
3 Think circular not linear
A vital part of future-fit business is the widening of the business lens from merely transactional i.e. from a focus on selling stuff to customers in a linear one-way process, to participatory and circular, where customers re-engage with suppliers for recycling and upcycling services. Take one of my clients, the award-winning Vivobarefoot, which recycles worn shoes, thus keeping them out of landfill, and engages with customers – through offering 3D foot-scanning for customised shoes, and hosting online courses, tools and coaching, such as learning to run and breathwork. More often, the value we attribute to such exchanges is not limited to the price tag on the good or service. The organisations with the best ability to work with these relationships and exchanges across the board will be the most adept at navigating the emerging business landscape.
4 Think inter-generational and ‘glocal’
Amid the short-termism of many business decisions, many of us think individually about the kind of future we’re leaving for the next generation. While regenerative acts – such as composting, not wasting food or helping our neighbours – can happen at home, they should happen in our businesses too. Asking whether a business venture is actually enhancing life as opposed to just reducing its negative impacts does not distract us from our business endeavours, but deepens the creativity we unleash for doing things that provide proper value for the world. For example, Vivobarefoot is transforming its operations, supply-chain and organisational culture toward the principles of regeneration. Therefore, as well as making its products far more sustainable, it has evolved into being a natural lifestyle brand, where opportunities such as rewilding experiences are offered. And by acting ‘glocally’ (with local and global awareness), it supports a variety of initiatives involved in regenerating local ecosystems, which sparks all sorts of synergies and reconnects company success with social and ecological progress. Globally, it is involved in networks and conferences that work on society-wide solutions, such as the B Corp movement and United Nations COP conferences. This ‘glocal’ perspective challenges a narrowed view of wealth-creation limited to maximising short-term financial returns for shareholders, to thinking of wealth more holistically, in terms of regenerating community, nature, society and our home, Earth, upon which we all ultimately depend.
5 Think life-centric
As we get used to seeing the organisation-as-living-system, we start to value the importance of learning from life itself, in recognising that nature thrives through ever-changing inter-related systems within systems, just like our living-organisations. We participate in this life-centric reality whether we’re conscious of it or not. Each unique individual employee’s essence finds its tune within the team-essence, within the wider organisational essence that finds its tune within wider systemic interplays (business ecosystem, society, Earth). When we open up to life in this way, we realise that humans are immersed in a web of relationships, and to harm any of them is to damage our own selves and undermine our home. This life-centric sense of interconnectedness can inform how we lead and operate in business and beyond (this dove-tails with the 7th ‘way’ – Think Interconnection not Separation – covered below).
6 Think tensions, and the power they unleash
Learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable is an important leadership skill. Tensions between individuals are inevitable, but handled correctly by working through them rather than suppressing them, can create crucibles for creativity. We can also learn from seeing how nature’s creative advance is impelled by tensions. There’s the primary tension of yin-yang, for instance. Yin represents stillness, inner-being, receptivity, and compassion; yang represents movement, outer-doing, responsiveness, and assertion. We need both in business. Sometimes we might need a little more yang, sometimes more yin. There’s also the divergence-convergence tension. Divergence is opening-up, creativity, exploration, etc; convergence is bringing-together, cohering around a sense of purpose, having clear roles, and suchlike. Too much divergence and chaos ensues; too much convergence leads to rigidity. Getting that tension just right is essential to allow for emergence. All living systems express themselves through the self-generating, self-organising property of emergence. Businesses are no different. Living-systems thrive on this edge of chaos (divergence) and order (convergence), and it’s that edge that enables adaptability and vitality across the living-organisation.
7 Think Interconnection not separation
Essentially, we are nature, we are ever-immersed in relationality steeped in consciousness. Separateness is an illusion we have created in our own minds, in reality everything inter-relates with everything else – energetic, informational, rhythmic; held within a depth of dimension one might call ‘metaphysical’, ‘source’, ‘the field’ or ‘quantum’. From the quark string humming away, the water tumbling down stream, the sapling and Mother tree, the bee and hive, to the leader and organization, there’s not just ‘systems nested within systems’ but ‘fields immersed within fields’, interpenetrated with intentionality. Think – Indra’s Net: living-systems participating within living-systems which participate within wider living-systems, reciprocating across both tangible-physical and intangible-metaphysical dimensions. Mind and matter interpenetrate, there is no separation. As the great scientist Albert Einstein noted, the greatest illusion in life is the illusion of separation.
Regenerative business is essentially about learning to work the way life works, nothing more, nothing less. For more on working the way life works, you may enjoy this recent article on Living Systems Awareness – Making Decisions Within Nature.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner, keynote speaker, and executive coach known for his work in leadership development. His latest book is Leading by Nature: The Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader.
Latest book and podcast series: Leading by Nature – The Process of Becoming a Regenerative Leader
If you are interested in joining a deep-dive two-day/overnight immersion late May this year - see more details here (The February immersion is already fulling booked) https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/10/05/leading-by-nature-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness-2/
Feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
You may be interested in the full article on Regenerative Leadership in The Great British Brands 2024 edition with editor Lucy Cleland who recently visited Giles Hutchins and experienced a regenerative leadership immersion at Springwood Farm, Sussex, UK: https://www.countryandtownhouse.com/culture/regenerative-business/
Regenerative Leadership & Organizational Development = Leading by Nature
It’s a fascinating yet challenging time to be a leader. Multiple and profound shifts affect the way we work, how and why we do things, and the purpose and meaning we bring to our organizations. This new-norm in business is characterised by unceasing transformation. Change upon change upon change is what leaders are now dealing with. There’s a maelstrom of motives contributing to this volatile business terrain: hyper-connectivity, volatile transaction costs, disruptive innovations, shifting societal norms, new ways of working, the search for deeper meaning and purpose through work, fragile supply chains, resource scarcity, rising mental health and wellbeing issues, widespread disenfranchisement across workforces, increasing systemic shocks (COVID, Climate, conflict and more looming on the horizon). No organization is spared.
This new-norm in business demands a new-norm in leadership: a leadership consciousness that cultivates organizational cultures able to adapt and evolve amid unceasing transformation in ways that create flourishing for all. This can seem like a tall-order, in fact it is when we face the challenge with the same level of thinking that created it. Shift the consciousness and the challenge reframes into potentiality for evolution. As the management guru Peter Drucker insightful said, ‘In times of turmoil, the danger lies not in the turmoil itself but in facing it with yesterday’s logic.’ So what is yesterday’s logic?
Yesterday’s Logic
Much of today’s L&OD logic is still rooted in a worldview of mechanistic reductionism originated by the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th century. This view of the world draws upon assumptions of separateness, predictability, replicability and control. Life is assumed to be made up of separate things struggling for survival in a dog-eat-dog world of hyper-competition. It is then assumed that these separate things in life can be compartmentalised, controlled, measured and managed in linear predictable ways through push-pull mechanisms. Relationships between component parts and their wider context are often overlooked or de-emphasised. This view of life informed Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management published in 1909. Taylorism became hugely influential in setting the context for viewing the organization as a machine, a view that is still dominant today. Employees are relegated to the role of efficiently performing the duties as defined by management who compartmentalise activities and relationships in an effort to make things easier to control and measure.
As a tool within a broad human-repertoire, this reductive tendency to break things down into parts is useful. Narrowing-down and compartmentalising complexity into binary relationships enables us to create models of cause-effect linearity. For instance, detailed Gantt-charts for project management, quantized KPI measurements, and systematic foresight planning tools are useful to have at our finger-tips, all of which call upon reductive methods of analysis. As long as we also remember that life is not actually like this.
When this machine-logic becomes a dominant worldview, we start to believe that the organization actually is a set of neatly definable parts that can be measured and controlled in isolation. The leadership team controls from the top, cascading commands through layers of management to the workers at the bottom. A narrowed focus is applied to optimizing short-term returns while perceiving stakeholder relations through the threat-tinted lens of hyper-competition. This mentality creates fragile organizations based on control, fear and exploitation which undermines trust, dis-empowers employees, corrupts purpose, and exploits the wider business ecosystem for short-term maximization. This is a recipe for extinction not evolution. While the logic of the machine may pride itself on driving out inefficiencies, what it actually creates is burgeoning bureaucracy and disempowerment inside the organization and widespread externalities and fragilities beyond the organization through its restricted view of life.
Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini’s London Business School research explores how the stratified power structures, specialized roles and standardized tasks of the organization-as-machine create a massive bureaucratic-drag, costing the US economy alone over $3tn annually. Another organization-as-machine inefficiency is what the Harvard Business School professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey researched: most leaders and employees are doing a second job no one is paying them for – the job of managing other people’s impressions of themselves, covering up their weaknesses, playing politics, hiding uncertainties, wearing masks at work. Far from the machine-mindset driving out inefficiencies, it actually undermines productivity, resilience, innovation and initiative. People are fed up with working in bureaucratic organizations. We all want to actively participate in creative, passionate and empowering organizations where we feel a meaningful connection with the value we create rather than feeling like corporate cogs enslaved in a machine.
In reality, organizations are relational purposeful evolving systems made up of messy unpredictable human relationships that thrive amid a diverse web of stakeholder relations all intimately interrelated with wider society and the natural world. Organizations display non-linear dynamics and self-organizing behaviours more akin to living-systems. These living-organizations are responsive to continuous change, and continually learn, evolve and thrive amid unceasing transformation. The organization-as-machine, on the other hand, relies on top-down perspectives far-removed from the customer and expensive cumbersome change-management programmes that all-too-often fall woefully short in future-proofing the business.
The Necessary Evolution from Machine to Living-systems L&OD
The L&OD living-systems paradigm is a worldview shift onwards from yesterday’s machine paradigm. A ‘worldview shift’ may sound daunting, especially when many of us experience significant stress, busyness and volatility in the workplace today. The good news is, this worldview shift is actually a return; a revitalization of something innate – a reconnection with our true nature within us, and the rhythms and ways of nature all around us. Woven deep into our human physiology and psychology is the natural capacity to embrace a living-systems worldview. This worldview shift requires us to unlearn habits and behaviours we’ve become educated and acculturated in over the last couple of centuries. It also requires us to open-up in to who we truly are, while welcoming in more of how life really is. Letting-go of old illusory ways while welcoming-in our deeper nature, what could be more invigorating? It is the quest of real leadership. The root of the word ‘leadership’ is the old European word ‘leith’ which means to cross the threshold, to die and be reborn, to let-go of an old way and welcome-in the new.
When, as leaders, we are able to let-go of old mechanistic tendencies, and expand our restricted view of the organization, we open ourselves and our teams to more of how life really works. We learn to work with natural rhythms and ways that encourage the vitality and adaptability of the organization. We learn to lead by nature.
Leading by Nature
I call this regenerative nature-inspired approach to L&OD, Leading by Nature. It is at once completely natural and radically different from today’s dominant leadership narrative. Above all, it is a journey not a destination. This journey has both inner and outer dimensions for the leader and the organization:
For the leader – the inner-dimension is the capacity to connect to our true nature within; tapping into our essence so we lead with authenticity, coherence and purposefulness. The outer-dimension is about attuning with life around us, being open and receptive to the ever-changing nature of life, and creating generative spaces where trust, responsiveness and developmental learning thrive. This inner-outer leadership coherence allows us to create regenerative potential in ourselves and through our relationships with others.
For the organization – the inner-dimension is the mission, culture, values, meeting conventions and decision-making protocols that pervade the organization’s way of being. Creating a more purposeful, adult-adult, entrepreneurial, self-managing, diverse and inclusive way of working unlocks the organization’s regenerative potential. The outer-dimension is the customer value propositions, supply-chain and wider stakeholder relationships that drive how the organization shows-up in the world. This inner-outer organizational coherence allows diverse stakeholder relations to flourish through the products, services, experiences and communities the organization facilitates.
The up-shot of this regenerative L&OD is a working environment where people feel able to bring their whole selves to work, therefore able to unlock more of their natural creative spark. This humanness invites innovation, collaboration and purposefulness into the heart of everyday meetings and decision-making. An adult-adult culture of agility and empowered entrepreneurialism allows failures to be continuously transformed into learnings, and reduces the burden of bureaucracy.
This might sound like fanciful utopia to some. Surely business is about the bottom-line? For sure, every organization needs to survive in order to thrive in today’s world, and there are clear financial benefits in becoming regenerative. Years of detailed research by The Global Lamp Index show that companies embracing this living-systems approach consistently outperform their mechanistic counter-parts. To attract and retain high-quality talent, to innovation, out-perform and adapt amid increasingly volatile times we need to shift the way we lead and operate, especially amid a wider societal shift demanding more meaning, purpose, engagement and creativity in the workplace.
The old machine logic has an inherent control-manage dynamic that subverts and manipulates, whereas the living-systems logic has a sense-respond dynamic that empowers and enables. This shift in relational dynamic from control-manage to sense-respond requires a personal shift in consciousness, from separateness to relational interconnectedness.
As leaders, we’ve become well-heeled in the control-manage dynamic. We can unlearn this dynamic through a developmental journey of learning-in-practice. As we unlearn, we create space for a deeper knowing inside ourselves to be heard. We start to trust our natural inner capacities (non-rational intuitions, hunches, gut-feeling, heart perturbations, etc. as well as rational reasoning). These natural capacities help us sense how dynamics play out across the living-organization. This calls upon a combination of self-awareness and systemic-awareness within side ourselves.
Self-Awareness can be conveyed as containing two dimensions, a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension.
The horizontal dimension relates to the quality of presence we bring to each evolving moment. This quality of presence depends upon our capacity to notice our own patterns of reactivity, habit, bias, conditioning, triggers and projections. In Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, he refers to the Voice of Judgement, the Voice of Cynicism, and the Voice of Fear. These three voices are in us all the time, keeping us safe from potential danger yet in the process keeping us small, reducing down our capacity to adapt and evolve. As we become more intimate with our own inner-ways, we learn to acknowledge these inner voices, and the habitual patterns of reactivity they create, so they do not hijack us so much. That way, we can keep ourselves as receptive and sensitive to the present moment, along with all its challenges and tensions. Therefore, we improve our ability to sense-and-respond to life, whether that be a difficult conversation down the corridor, a public-speaking engagement or listening to the needs of our team members in unfiltered non-judgmental ways.
The vertical dimension of self-awareness relates to our adult developmental psychology stage-development. All advanced adult developmental psychology models show stages of psychological worldview-development we progress through as we evolve our consciousness as adults. These models point to a significant threshold–crossing that occurs when we reach a certain point in our stage-development. We shift from a worldview of separateness (separate self as performance-achiever maximizing output in a dog-eat-dog world) to a worldview of interconnectedness (relational interconnected self as participator-facilitator helping co-create life-affirming futures). As we advance in our adult developmental psychology – which is more of an inner-deepening than an outer-advancement – we start to open more readily to the systemic and evolutionary nature of life. We are more able to tap in to Nature’s Wisdom, and sense the systemic dynamics at play within the living-organization. And so as our self-awareness deepens, our systemic-awareness naturally arises within us.
Systemic-awareness is the capacity to sense the wider relational system we lead and operate within: to sense its hidden ordering forces, patterns of behaviour, historic conditioning, habituated responses, and energetic networks of participation, learning and evolution. As we begin to realise that life itself is developmental (ever-learning) with emergent patterns of unfolding evolution, so too for our living-organizations.
Systemic leadership coaching can help here. Conventional executive coaching has tended to focus on the leader as an individual actor rather than understanding, and working with, the ever-changing relational field with its relational tensions and developmental dynamics. Systemic coaching can facilitate the L&OD shift by drawing upon systemic tools such as relational system-mapping, structured or unstructured constellations, deep listening, generative dialogue, Way of Council, Holistic Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U, Social Presencing, systemic immersions, and the application of Systemic Enablers (which is explored further in a moment). These, along with other systemic tools help open-up our awareness of the organization-as-living-system and help us learn how to attune with 1) the essence and purposefulness of the living-organization; 2) the systemic learning patterns and emergent-evolutionary dynamics of the system.
This mind-set shift is significant – rather than trying to externally fix the machine, by repairing or operating on it from above, instead we are sensing how the living-system can start to internally heal, renew and evolve itself. There are similarities here with oriental medicine where every system in life including the human body, is understood as being able to heal itself and realise its innate purposefulness when there is the right balance and flow of energy in the system. Blockages, stuckness and imbalance limit and undermine evolutionary potential. Just as we human-beings get stuck on past trauma, bad habits or past-conditioning which can hold us back from realising our potential, so too for our living-organizations. And like acupuncture can help the human-body, small pin-prick interventions can help the organizational-system flow with greater potential. Rather than major invasive surgery we can sense into small systemic interventions that are less costly, less intrusive or destabilising, and more respectfully aligned with the nature of the living-organization. While there may well be times when the future-fitness of the organization would be best served through major surgery (replacing a toxic Board, or carving off a part of the business, for instance) we ought first learn to sense how the living-organization can unlock its innate regenerative powers.
Let’s take the topic of performance reviews as an example to illustrate this shift from mechanistic to living-systems L&OD. Many of today’s performance review processes are based on the premise that performance resides solely in the individual. The reality is, there are systemic factors that affect the performance of every individual and team throughout the organization. In attempting to assess or improve performance, we need to be conscious of what is influencing the way people show-up, the capacity to relate with others, make decisions and work with the purposefulness of the living-organization. Within the organization, no one performs in isolation, therefore understanding systemic dynamics when assessing or improving performance is key.
Rather than trying to suppress or solve system challenges, we learn to acknowledge, attend-to and attune-with the relational dynamics at play in the organization. This process of acknowledging and attending-to involves deep listening, circles of sharing, and open honest feedback across the system. Then we may learn to attune-with the inner-nature of the organization and shift its vitality from survivalist-stressed machine into emergent-evolutionary living-system by re-patterning relational tensions in ways that allow better flow, richer purposefulness, innovative value propositions and greater impact across its wider stakeholder ecosystem. Inner-nature alignment allows the outer-nature of the organization to up-stretch towards life-affirming futures.
Over the years, I have found a few systemic practices to be particularly powerful. One I’d like to share here is the practice of what I call Systemic Enablers and their involvement in facilitating Organizational Acupuncture.
Systemic Enablers & Organizational Acupuncture
A diverse group of people from across different functions in the business are selected. Anything from about 4 to 14 people to start with can work well, regardless of the organization’s overall head-count. This group of people ought to be diverse in terms of the functional business areas they represent. It can be useful to have atleast one member from either the exec or senior leadership team, yet hierarchy is not so important here. What is important is the aptitude, perception and relational-engagement each person has with the organizational system. These Systemic Enablers should have healthy peer-connectivity and diverse networks of sharing and collaborating across the business. Colleagues often seek advice from them or turn to them in times of challenge. They are seen as positive agents of change and have a strong resonance with the purpose and values of the business.
Many of the people I come across in business are not initially well-versed or comfortable in sensing organizational system-dynamics yet if the quality of awareness and general aptitude is there, I have found that it doesn’t take long for people to start perceiving and working this way. Systemic-awareness is natural to every human being, and yet I have noticed that some people find it easier to listen-sense-respond to organizational dynamics. With enough time and dedication there is no reason why everyone in the organization can’t become Systemic Enablers, yet a circle of 4-14 folk is a really great place to start.
This cohort of Systemic Enablers then becomes a community of practice embarking upon a transformational learning journey both for themselves, as a community-group, and for the wider organization. The time requirement need not be any more than a day a month, along with some learning-in-action that only compliments the day-job. When they convene as a community, they are in-service of the organization. Through regular (for instance, monthly) circles the cohort shares their insights on the living-organization.
These circles use an appreciative inquiry method of positive questioning and collaborative inquiry. It is ‘appreciative’ in that the line of inquiry is about recognizing the best in people and seeking the learning potential each context offers; working with where the flow of potential is, rather than getting ensnared on problem areas. I also call upon Theory U practices, deep listening, structured constellations, generative dialogue techniques like Way of Council, mindfulness and somatic-based practices, in-person nature immersions, and on-line meditations. These practices, and more, are all aimed to help create psychologically deep yet safe-spaces for the Systemic Enablers to sense into the systemic dynamics of the organizational living-system. It is not always possible for the cohort to meet in-person and there are techniques that help ensure virtual circles can go deep quickly so that people can sense-in, reflect and share what is often just beneath the surface of the organization. Upon identifying and acknowledging systemic patterns, the cohort learn to discern insights on where and in what way to engage in small systemic interventions that send positive ripples across the system, just like acupuncture pinpricks do in aligning us to our inner healing potential. We re-pattern relational stuckness into better flow, richer purposefulness and increased outer impact.
One example of these Systemic Enablers in-practice is at the global lifestyle brand Vivobarefoot whose goal is to create regenerative footwear and experiences that bring us closer to nature. Early on in their journey towards becoming a regenerative business, I worked with the senior leadership team to identify a dozen Systemic Enablers who I have been journeying with for over 18mths now, through a blend of on-line and in-person sessions. Vivo calls these Systemic Enablers Proprioceptors (the biological name for the sensory neurons that sense and respond to movement in our bodies). These Proprioceptors enliven a culture of regenerative feedback, developmental learning, and self-system evolution by regularly checking-in and sharing feedback across the whole Vivo system. In parallel, the Proprioceptors work alongside a number of silo-busting learning pods, where everyone from across the business comes together in groups of about a dozen to engage in blended-learning journeys: on-line webinars, off-line homework, peer-learning, and in-person nature immersions.
To summarise, there is a necessary evolution in L&OD happening on our watch. Three important aspects of this L&OD evolution are:
- A worldview shift from machine to living-systems. This involves a shift in leadership dynamic from control-manage to sense-respond.
- In invoking this shift, we need look no further than within and all around us. Learning to attune with our inner-nature through self-awareness and with the relational dynamics all around us in the organization through systemic-awareness. This is an inner-outer attunement cultivated through an embodied learning-in-action transformational journey.
- There are powerful yet simple practices we can draw upon to enable this transformational journey. One practice I have experienced working well is Systemic Enablers applying Organizational Acupuncture.
We are in the midst of a civilization-wide transformation of the scale never seen before: halving carbon emission by 2030, reversing nature loss, overhauling social inequality, tackling the mental health and wellbeing pandemic, embracing the digital revolution, and dealing with rising volatility and turbulence. No organization is spared. Leading by Nature welcomes-in a fresh yet timeless wisdom right into the front-line of our everyday conversations, decision-making methods and ways of showing-up. The time has come for Homo Sapiens to live up to their name of ‘wise beings’ by learning to attune with Nature’s Wisdom and cultivating life-affirming organizations.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Master of Science in Business Systems and higher diploma in Advanced Leadership Development, trained in Integral Solonics vertical development, and certified in Harthill vertical development action-logics.
Leading by Nature book and podcast can be found here: https://gileshutchins.com/leadingbynature/
Giles Hutchins’ unique regenerative leadership coaching for leaders and practitioners has been called ‘life changing’, find out more here: https://gileshutchins.com/coaching/
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIN group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
The Nature of Business 